“Well then? Do you think I am afraid of the word! Did you ever try to take off its shell and look into its inner meaning? I shall tell you.⁠ ⁠… Remember a blue hill, a crowd, a cross? Some up on the hill, sprinkled with blood, are busy nailing a body to the cross; others below, sprinkled with tears, are gazing upward. Does it not seem to you that the part which those above must play is the more difficult, the most important part? If it were not for them, how could that magnificent tragedy ever have been staged? True, they were hissed by the dark crowd but for that the author of the tragedy, God, should have remunerated them the more liberally, should he not? And the Christian, most clement God himself, who burnt on a slow fire all the infidels, is he not an executioner? Was the number of those burned by the Christians less than the number of burned Christians? Yet (you must understand this!), yet this God was for centuries glorified as the God of love! Absurd? Oh, no. Just the contrary. It is rather a patent for the imperishable wisdom of man, written in blood.